A WARTIME chain of love letters was the start of 60 years of happy marriage for a Nantwich diamond anniversary couple.

Robert and Alma George, who live at The Green, Hankelow, first come into contact in unusual circumstances while he was in the North African desert in 1940 with the 3rd GHQ Signals Corps.

He was having difficulty getting used to the severe changes in day and night-time temperatures and, with his woollen top irritating his skin, he wrote to his mother asking if she could knit him a khaki long-sleeved pullover.

Robert explained: “Some six months later she replied that a young lady was making it for me and that I should receive it soon.

“It arrived and was a perfect fit and I wrote and thanked Alma, the girl who made it, very much and I received another letter from her.

“This started correspondence that continued for some time and developed into romance and we decided to get engaged.”

Robert, who is a Probus club member, was asked by his colleagues at Audlem to write an entry for an exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the war.

He chose to talk about how he and his wife had met. It describes how he did not meet Alma in person until May, 1945 and that their meeting was heaven sent.

Three years after returning to Britain, Robert, now 89, married Alma, 87, in Liverpool on October 23, 1948, on the anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, which he had been involved in.

He said: “I have very different, but special memories of those two October 23 days. We have had a very happy time and had our difficulties the same as everybody else.”

He added: “We have enjoyed three holidays a year, visiting all over the Mediterranean and British Columbia, to visit Alma’s relatives.